Extremely-regarded third-person army shooter Spec Ops: The Line has been faraway from sale on Steam and different digital storefronts, and no one appears to know why—not even the sport’s designer and director.
Spec Ops: The Line got here out in 2012. It did not promote particularly properly—it was an honest third-person army shooter dropped in amongst video games like Fashionable Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2, and that is a troublesome spot for any sport—however we nonetheless speak about it right now due to the story. It is a Coronary heart of Darkness-style street to hell that dives headlong into the horrors of battle and the trauma it inflicts on troopers and civilians, with moments (one particularly) that make Fashionable Warfare 2’s notorious No Russian degree look nearly quaint.
It isn’t totally profitable in its ambitions, as a result of the linear nature of the narrative takes some important moments of selection out of the gamers’ fingers (we dug into that facet of the sport a pair years after it got here out, though notice that there are some main spoilers), however it’s undeniably an essential videogame—in spite of everything, as I mentioned, we’re nonetheless speaking about it.
Anyway, the underside line is that it is good and you must play it in the event you’re into army shooters—however that is going to be tough proper now as a result of it is not accessible on Steam. The delisting was seen final night time by Wario64, and it is subsequently been faraway from different storefronts together with Fanatical and Gamesplanet—though, considerably oddly, it is nonetheless accessible for buy (for the second, at the very least) on GOG and Humble, and for Xbox consoles.
At this level writer 2K Video games hasn’t mentioned why Spec Ops: The Line has been faraway from sale, however hypothesis is that the soundtrack is the wrongdoer. There’s fairly a little bit of licensed music within the sport from artists together with Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, Martha and the Vandellas, and Björk; Hendrix’s well-known rendition of the Star Spangled Banner performs within the background of Spec Ops: The Line’s menu:
It isn’t all that unusual for video games to be faraway from sale when content material licenses expire. Music might be the commonest trigger, however any form of licensed content material—automobiles, archival footage, the grim darkness of the far future—can result in gross sales being halted after a sure period of time has handed. When that occurs, publishers have a selection: Renew the license, take away the offending content material, or simply drop the entire thing altogether. Within the case of a sport like Spec Ops—12 years outdated, not precisely an enormous vendor—the probability of a renewal is perhaps distant.
There’s additionally a smattering of hope that the elimination might sign an incoming Spec Ops remaster. That will be very cool, and it does not appear totally out of the query: Rockstar, which can also be owned by 2K Video games mother or father firm Take-Two Interactive, lately did a cope with Treatment to remake the similarly-iconic-but-underselling Max Payne video games.
But when that’s within the works, Spec Ops designer and director Cory David does not appear to find out about it.
“Is not sensible—particularly as a result of the themes portrayed in SpecOpsTheLine are extra related now than ever,” Davis tweeted. “Why has this occurred?”
That’s the large query of the second—I’ve reached out to 2K to ask and can replace if I obtain a reply.
